


My Wallet and the Lake Monster

by TheTofuEatingCat



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 03:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11934924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTofuEatingCat/pseuds/TheTofuEatingCat
Summary: True story on how I dropped my wallet into a lake, causing me to find something unexpected.





	My Wallet and the Lake Monster

As a lifeguard, I wanted to share my story, but I never got around to doing it. So I’ll share it here. To start off, I am a 17-year-old female lifeguard, I have a very lithe figure, weighing in at 115lbs and stand at a reasonable 5’7″. I am known to be creative and an out of the box thinker, along with a great knowledge of the natural world, especially aquatic animals of all stripes. Another thing to recognize is I am an avid crypto-enthusiast, indulging in anything that doesn’t fit with nature’s known rules. In addition to these traits, I have found myself in numerous predicaments of doing dangerous things, almost all of which induced by my morbid curiosity and stubborn fearlessness.

I worked at a Christian camp in Wisconsin during the summer of 2017. The camp situated on a lakeside that you could see while driving past the campgrounds. The area we had to cover as a group was enormous in my opinion, especially because we were short staffed and only had 7 guards at most (which was a very rare occurrence). The lake-front not only included the swimming area, but the boating area. To give you a mental image I’ll explain our daily routines and the work area.

In order for us to get down to the lakefront, you had to go down a small but steep hill, which led down to boats. The boat front consisted of two docks, one regular straight dock and a ‘t’ shaped dock, with about 5 paddle boats on the straight dock and 6 on the ‘t’ dock. The paddle boat cove created by the docks housed the paddle boats, and on the other side of the ‘t’ dock, which was on the left side of you if you faced the lake, held a maintenance motorboat. To the left of that, past some willow trees that dangled in the water was the place where we anchored a water toy called ‘The Blob’.

The blob is basically a huge inflatable tube, at least 12 meters long and 2 meters wide. One person would jump down on it then would crawl to the end, and when positioned correctly, another person, usually bigger would jump onto it to launch the person at the end. Sometimes the kid wouldn’t even get off the blob. While other times, like mine, the person gets launched up to 25 feet in the air and over the swim line which is an additional 15 feet away from the end of the blob. The blob had to be anchored down elsewhere so other lake-goers would not use it while a lifeguard was not on duty. The blob was usually heavy, very heavy. It would fill up with water making it incredibly hard to drag the 200 meters or so to the blob tower, which is where people would jump off of. And as a very strong swimmer, and a point-zero complainer, I usually had to get the blob with another coworker.

Around 150 meters away from the blob’s anchoring point the beach starts, directly to the right of the beach is the wibit, or obstacle course. Which is around 7 meters long. And around 5 meters from the wibit, is a giant slide that is 5 meters long and 3 high that resides 3 meters in the deep water area. From the wibit to the blob tower dock, a shallow water line runs down to keep the shallow water swimmers in the shallow zone. To the upper left of the end of the blob lies the big raft, which has a small diving tower and two ladders to climb up on. And to the right of that, the small dock, which likes to spin around, making finding the single ladder a challenging feat. All in all, the swim area is nearly 200 meters in length and 75 in width, with the shallow line being at a decent 17ish meters out.

Now there are seven stations you can be situated at, and we rotate every half-hour, and a buddy check every 15 mins. The Kayak is situated right in front of the blob, it’s there to ensure the safety of those who are using the blob. If we didn’t have enough guards, the yak was the second to go besides break. In this case, the guard on the big raft would take over the duties of the yak, in addition to watching the big dock. Then, small dock, they were tasked to watch the people at the top of the slide, and those on the small raft. Next, water toys. A guard would be positioned next to the wibit, to ensure kids didn’t hurt themselves, and to make sure there weren’t too many kids underneath the slide. After water toys were boats, where you would assist kids with paddleboats, canoes, kayaks, and rowboats. Then, back to the beach where you would be on break: if you were lucky enough to have one. Otherwise, it was straight to the highchair, where you would sit up and conduct buddy checks when needed and call out the numbers of kids who needed their buddy. Either way, a cushy position.

It was mid-July when I was positioned on a particularly cold and rainy day out on the big dock. I had my big lifeguard sweat-shirt on, which had a big pocket in the front. I had gotten some food on break, so my wallet was in there. Unfortunately, I had forgotten I had it in there when I was ferried out to the raft. And when we called the kids onto land because of a quickly picking up storm, a coworker helped me back to shore on the kayak. I didn’t realize until later that I had dropped my wallet in the water by the base of the big dock, where it was roughly 25 feet.

The thought of diving down deep to find my wallet didn’t phase me, as I was a trained SCUBA diver and overall incredible swimmer, capable of diving down nearly 30 feet. So, on my breaks, I used that time to scan the bottom of the lake for my wallet. Now, there are a few things you should know about lake diving. 1: It gets cold, and it gets cold fast. At the top of the water, it’s around 70 degrees F while a mere 12 below it’s probably around 60-55 degrees, and it gets colder the deeper you go. 2: It gets dark, fast. Freshwater isn’t clear like salt, and with kids kicking up sand and other debris, it only makes the water cloudier. Luckily diving down deep enough rendered the silt to not be as bad, however, you had to be careful as to not stir up the debris and leaves coating the lake bottom.

Due to this, I could not use fins, nor could I push off the bottom when I needed to surface. Despite all of these challenges, I proceeded to free dive to search for my wallet, making 4-7 dives per 30 minute period. With only my goggles and swimsuit, I would dive down to search. Taking in deep breaths to oxygenate my blood before doing so. Please note that you should never free dive without a buddy OR training, it is much more dangerous than actual SCUBA diving.

The water was cold and the pressure harsh, as I couldn’t equalize my ears as I normally would with SCUBA gear, this made my diving limiting, as I could only go so deep. So, often times only 1-2 dives at the end of the session would be of any use, due to me working my body into diving condition.

It was during this week of diving something very unexpected happened. A good sized largemouth bass had floated into the swim area, absolutely torn up. Its innards were splayed and it had a huge tear, no bite mark on its belly as if something had chomped it. The worst part was: it was still alive. Luckily it was a teens camp, and not a kids camp, so the campers weren’t too shaken. And it was quickly forgotten. But, more fish seemed to turn up dead, and I had heard from a co-worker who lived on the lake, that while out kayaking, they had come across a large carp, the size of a cat, mangled in the same horrific way.

A fortnight after losing my wallet I decided against my better judgment, to dive down using the anchor line on the big dock. Basically going hand over hand on the chain to myself down, all while spending as little energy and oxygen as possible. I had gotten maybe 20 feet down when I noticed something in the gloom below me. A large darker mass slinking through the darkness in the water below. I could barely make out the silhouette, but it was enough to send shivers down my spine. It was fish-like but much too big and bulky for any native species. Or even introduced for that matter. I would know, as an avid environmentalist for the area. In fact, the only native fish to Wisconsin that could fit the silhouette’s size was a sturgeon, but they were river dwelling fish, not lake dwellers. In the murky waters, I quickly lost sight of its form. I booked it back up the line.

I didn’t speak a word to my co-workers about it. Why? I was already a ‘weird’ kid. Knowing too much scientific stuff for my own good, and they’d just poke fun of me for it. I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it, so I just returned to diving the drop off slope, my imagination running wild at every flickering shadow cast underwater.

The next week whilst doing a swim test, which required me and my co-workers to stand in the water to ensure nobody drowned and to assess their swimming, I felt something at my feet in the chest high water. Nibbles and other movements startled me throughout the time, causing me to yelp in surprise several times. I had joked with the kids and my co-workers about it, saying how a bluegill must have thought my legs looked good. The week went on without incident, and to my utter surprise I ended up finding my wallet on a dive down. The only thing that alerted me to its presence was its green reflective stripes decorating it. As it was an alien sort of themed wallet. But the second to last week, had me horrified.

Kids were coming to my coworkers and I left and right about something pecking and biting them while in deeper water and right by the swim line. One kid even reported he felt something chasing him. We assured them it was probably a bluegill defending its nest, despite being well out of the spawning season. But there was one final thing that had me on the radio calling down to the head guard.

A kid’s swimsuit had been torn by something. Right at the seam of the swimsuit on the butt, a large piece of cloth was ripped, luckily, the suit was double layered, so only the outer layer was damaged. I asked what happened and she explained that her friends and herself were swimming over by the shallow swim line, when she felt something tug on her suit. I asked her if any of her friends were by her and she responded with no. When I asked where she was swimming, she pointed directly where I was standing a fortnight prior. To stop them from panicking, I told her that she might have just caught it on something, even though I knew damn well there were no debris in that area or vicinity.

After talking to my co-workers about this at a sort of lifeguard dinner outing, one of my more serious coworkers piped up about seeing huge fish when they were untangling the buoy lines that would attach to the blob. Others piped up about feeling something swimming by them on particularly hot days when they were sitting in the water at water toys. Another coworker confessed to seeing something by the blob whilst doing a body search but didn’t say anything. I mentioned my experience then, and despite all of this evidence, we never made a move against it, to see what it was.

Even after the guard season has ended, I still find myself thinking deeply about this incident. I don’t know if what I saw was, in fact, a new species, which wouldn’t be a big surprise as the lake housed rare freshwater jellyfish. Or some sort of lake monster. Either way, I am still highly curious about it, and I would like to take a dive there to see what I can find. Whether I will like what I find. Well, that’s another story for the future to show.


End file.
